Ryanair beats Iberia, Air Europa and easyJet for passenger numbers in 2019

Between January and June 2019 inclusive, just under 23,571,000 passengers travelled to and from Spain on the Irish-based low-cost airline.

The second-most used flight company was Catalunya-based budget carrier Vueling, part of the IAG Group which owns Iberia and British Airways, with 19.6 million customers travelling to and from Spain.

Both these low-cost options were streets ahead of national airline Iberia – despite providing long-haul, short-haul and national flights, its traffic only accounted for just under 9.9 million passengers in the first six months of 2019.

Spanish carrier Air Europa, with 9.1 million, beat Ryanair's main rival, easyJet, which transported 8.32 million travellers.

Iberia would still have been only the third-busiest airline in Spain in the first half of this year even when taking into account passenger figures for its short-haul cheap holding Iberia Express – with 4.8 million, and regional branch Air Nostrum, with 4.28 million.

Norwegian beat Air Nostrum but was behind Iberia Express, carrying 4.55 million passengers.

Making up the remainder of the top 10 were Binter, with 3.57 million and Jet2, with 3.3 million.

20x20 centimetre bag on board, unless they pay €6 each way for priority boarding to include a 50x40x20 centimetre case, or €8 each way to check in a small case of this size.

As at the end of June, Ryanair held 18.4% of Spain's air travel market quota, even though it reported a fall of 21% in profits in the first quarter of 2019 and has warned it may have to make several hundred cabin crew members and pilots redundant – especially if a no-deal Brexit affects flight traffic between the UK and Ireland.

Despite only being the fourth carrier in Spain, Air Europa has shown the greatest and fastest passenger growth this year, increasing its customer numbers by 12.6%, or about a million travellers.

Low-cost airlines now account for 73 million passengers in and out of Spain between January and June.

A total of 263 million people flew out of or to Spain in 2018.